Crystal Ball Time: If Elected, How Will Obama Govern?

I know we still have 15 days until November 4th, or E-Day as I like to call it. A lot can happen in that time, so this is way premature, but I’m tired of analyzing the horse race. So let’s suppose for a minute Sen. Obama is able to maintain the lead he has enjoyed for the past month or so. Can he be the president this country needs?

Matt Bai has an interesting article in this weeks’ New York Times magazine. The gist is that Obama had hoped to change the image of Democrats as coastal snobs by showing white, rural, less-educated voters, especially men, that he understood them without patronizing them. For a variety of reason, some his fault (the “bitter” comment) some not (the pundits’ “liberal elite” label), Obama has been less successful in this quest than he had hoped. Of course, race is a factor, too. But Bai suggests it may be just one factor, along with economic despair and lask of enthusiasm for Sen. McCain. And it does seem that Obama is polling better among white men, even rural, less-educated white men, than Gore or Kerry did.

Anyway, Obama had hoped to be the consensus candidate. And now it seems, if he wins, it will be by being the candidate of only slightly more than half the voters. So can he become the consensus president? Can he convince Republicans that Democrats are not all atheist coastal intellectual snobs who will raise your taxes and confiscate your guns? Can he convince the atheist coastal intellectual snobs within the Democratic party to get off their high horses and consider other points of view? Matt Bai quotes Obama as saying “If I’m able to change this, then it’s probably going to be most powerful after I’m elected…and I can prove it by what I do.”

Maybe, maybe not. If the Democrats win big majorities in the House and Senate, they are going to be very tempted to gloat, and adopt a screw-the-GOP-you-lost strategy. Let’s see if the candidate of Hope and Change can keep it up in the White House.